Roma Bank to lay off 57 employees as part of merger

Roma Bank will lay of 57 of its employees as part of the Robbinsville-based institution’s merger with Investors Bank announced last year.

Roma CEO and President Peter Inverso said the layoffs came from duplicative administrative employees within the bank. Forty of the employees had not interviewed for positions at Investors, he said. The layoffs are effective May 31, according to a March 28 letter from Investors Bank.

“Investors went out of their way to keep as many employees as they possibly could,” he said.

Inverso said the layoffs will not affect the front-end operations, such as loan officers, and comprises only a fraction of the bank’s 330 employees. He said the employees were all offered severance packages as part of their termination.

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The letter itself said “the mass layoff will be conducted because of the anticipated merger between Investors Bank and Roma Bank and both the resulting redundancy of jobs remaining after the merger as well as the termination of certain operations,” the letter said.

The all-stock merger deal, worth about $450 million, gives Roma investors 0.8653 shares of Investors stock for each stock in Roma, or about $15 a share. Regulators still need to approve the sale, and the acquisition will be finalized by May.

The layoffs, however, have not gone over well with Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried. As part of the merger, Investors cancelled plans last year for what would have been the town’s new municipal home.

“When the initiative was announced, they said it would be good for the community,” he said. “Well, I’m waiting for the good part.”

The decision, announced two weeks ago, has left the township with less than a year to find a new building, or continue renting space in the Sharbell Development Corporation building.

“Sometimes when you are looking for short-term profits, you harm longstanding relationships,” he said. “Investors is undoing a reputation that has taken Roma Bank 100 years to build.”

The township would have paid $3 million for the building’s third floor, which broke ground last October. Construction has stopped, leaving the building’s footprint as a fence-enclosed dirt lot on Route 33 in Town Center.

After news broke of Investors backing out of the township building, Roma Chairwoman Michele Siekerka said the bank would work in the next week to help Robbinsville find an alternative.

Fried said the township has not gotten any response from Roma since then about the municipal building.

The letters and severance notices went out the same week Inverso announced his candidacy for the State Senate seat in the 14th district.